Every moment I don’t document is a gift to myself, a moment just for me. My way of life is peace and freedom. From this springs love and joy. The pain that has creaked in my depths has rung the bells on the peaks of my most joyous mountaintops. Life is like learning a language, one word can arrive at a time. There can be no rush if we want to absorb and enjoy the process. Each word, each moment, deserves its space in time.
There is not fancy fashion here (in Amed), no designer bags or matching shoes. There are dirty sandals with sun bleached rubber, ragged tshirts, and sarongs. When it’s time to play dress up, the pickup trucks will drive by carrying dozens of women in the back wearing lace kabayas. They’ll be carrying baskets of fruit for the gods. Another truck will follow carrying the men dressed in white safari and udung (a white fabric wrapped around the head like a headband).
Once again I’m writing to you from the backseat of Ary’s van. He’s driving me through the jungle to the south side of the island. Last time, our route led us to the airport. This time, to Seminyak where I, with the help of modern technology, will locate Ivy for breakfast. Ivy is visiting Bali from the United States for a few days. She’s the woman who held my hand when I prepared to embark on the adventure of solo female travel, the one who encouraged me to visit Bali.
The early morning markets are alive. The uniformed students are walking along the roadside. Roosters are celebrating the day. Im enjoying the golden sunrise across the rice paddies and doing my best to not scratch my skin.
I am speckled from neck to ankles with “jelly wellies”. Yesterday I snorkeled with a smack of pink almost indoblegable jelly fish. Hundreds of them I swam through and now my body is peppered with welts, red dots rising and irritating. It’s most intense around the ankles, backs of knees, and wrists. Worth it. I was snorkeling with Tanya at Lipa Bay, over an expansive garden of coral, diving down to smile at fish hiding near the sand.
At the bottom I picked up handfuls of golden sand and dropped it back onto the sun dappled submerged ground. Scuba divers were bubbling and I dove down to their level and turned around to look upwards at the columns of rising bubbles beside the rays of sun refracting down through the surface. It was a spectacular light show from 8m below, suspended in blue.
I remember the way my heart soared when I saw the rice paddies for the first time, free on the back of a scooter, zooming through Canggu, nervous to be with a stranger, thrilled, on my way to the final moments of the closure of my old lifestyle, to Finns beach club, to the first of the final steps I’d take in that chapter of my life, in those old patterns, days before I would break them.
This new day at Potato Head Beach Club was one mile and a million moments away from where I was six months ago. This time I’m sunbathing and mermaiding in the pool with Ivy and Arno. Ivy helped me get here and Arno is calling me forward to my next great adventure. Ivy said, “Go to Bali.” Arno said, “Come to Raja Ampat.” I came to heal and I stayed to live on anew. Bali feels like home now, comfy and smiling. My body feels safe and my creativity is blossoming with community. Raja Ampat is an opportunity of a lifetime to feel Earth in her most wild state. Who will I meet there? Hardly any humans, so who? Someone new inside me? Animals? Deeper levels of my old friend Arno and deeper layers of my mother planet? Everyone is cheering and high-fiving me over this ocean wilderness expedition ahead. I got back on the freediving horse with this opportunity in mind. I want to be able to dive with Arno and feel this magical ocean I came from in her healthiest energy.
Old friends, new friends and a day in the sun drinking out of fresh young coconuts.
Love & Rainbows, Cha